I was last year in UK and was looking to buy a mobile phone operator-encrypted free, and the only place where I found my actual Sony Ericsson was a Carphone Warehouse Shop. I was very pleased to find out that they released on the Internet pictures of a very new handset rebranded by UK designer Ted Baker. The HTC’s Touch model comes in a mode-of-moment selection of colors and has been called The Ted Baker Needle.

The phone has a very sleek look and rests comfortably in palm – the designer is aware that the fashion-phone market is crowded already, but the efforts to make this handset look outstanding are obvious. Regarding the technical specifications, Carphone Warehouse said that it has the operating system based on Windows Mobile 6, Wi-Fi connectivity (802.11 b/g wireless), a touch screen (240x320) and a Micro SD Expansion slot.

If it’s a smart phone, it means it has a good processor as well – in this case a 201MHz one, that comes with other bonus features like a 2 megapixel camera at the back, and even further connectivity options: GSM/GPRS/EDGE tri-band and even Bluetooth 2.0 Physically speaking, the difference between the original HTC’s Touch (metallic-yellow) and Ted Baker’s (metallic-purple) are the Ted Baker’s logo and the stretched position of the speaker at the top. Also the control keys have been repositioned for practical reasons.

Another clever bonus that is given by The Needle is the TouchFLO technology, which allows you to control your contact information, the programs, the multimedia files by pressing gently you finger across the screen. It has been praised to have quite a stylish look while also managing to be smart – well, that would be unexpected – a smart phone that isn’t smart. It has been reported that the phone will arrive in Carphone Warehouse stores in November, but there’s no information on the price or the networks under which this phone will be distributed.

The new Visa Micro Tag is a new “free on board” key payment device which embeds the Visa payWave feature.
Visa payWave has been released recently, as a contact-less technology feature to permit cardholders to wave their card in front of contact less payment terminals with no need for physical swiping or card insertion.

Visa Micro Tag offers financial institutions the possibility to give cardholders a useful way of wearing an existing credit, debit or prepaid account with them.
One of the benefits of Visa payWare is that customers in US can opt for not signing for payments under 25$.
Many gas stations, sporting venues, convenience stores, and fast food restaurants, are already taking advantage of this technology.

According to Visa, the product is very secure because besides the standard protection of Visa products, it has also other security layers, submitting the unique digital watermark to the Visa payment network for each transaction.
In addition, the Visa Micro Tags don’t contain printed account numbers, as they are worn as key chains.

Pam Zuercher, vice president, product innovation and coordination at Visa USA, declared that “Consumers today are interested in using electronic forms of payment for small ticket purchases.” “As one of the smallest payment devices, the Visa Micro Tag allows cardholders to carry a payment device that delivers fast and convenient transactions, while also providing an added layer of security.”

Visa Micro Tag is not an expensive innovation; it can be easily manufactured and made into a variety shapes and sizes.

No matter the version of the operating system you're using, you need tools to help you keep it clean. I know, I know, every Windows version comes with its own cleaning tools, but... let's get serios! Do you really think so many software companies would mind creating programs that are useless? I don't think so...

Until now, it was my pleasure to tell you about a few uninstallers for Windows, most of them being really good tools, but today's target, called Advanced Uninstaller PRO, is much more than just an uninstaller, coming with a lot of useful tools to help you keep your computer clean and running at full speed.
Of course I'm not going to spoil the surprises you'll have later by telling you everything now, so let's take it step by step...


Setup
<-125x125 Button - left->
Advanced Uninstaller PRO reached its version 8.4 on the 25th of August, and now this program is fully compatible with Vista, also having some new features introduced especially for the Windows Vista users. Priced at $39, this program coming from Innovative Solutions can be taken for a free ride that is limited to 20 days, but has all the features that you'll get as a registered user, with the exception of the nag screen, of course.

The setup package of the program has exactly 16MB in size, but if you have a slow connection, the wait is going to worth in the end, believe me! Once the download has finished, installing the program should be as easy as 1-2-3, and I am sure that even beginners shouldn't have any problems with it, as long as they can understand English and they're not trying to install this Windows program on a Linux system...


Interface

As you start the program for the first time and encounter the Welcome screen, you are given the freedom to choose between using the default visual theme, choosing a different skin from a list or simply having no theme at all. Since I always liked the skins offered by this program, I choose the second option, and I advise you to do the same, unless you hate skins or have a really slow computer. Once you choose your theme and enter the application, I bet you'll agree that Advanced Uninstaller PRO looks simply great, and using it is also very easy, because you're guided all along the way.


Features

Before moving on, I still have to tell you about the second item you need to pay attention to inside the Welcome screen, the Rating feature. If you enable it, Advanced Uninstaller PRO will connect to the Internet and retrieve information about various programs that was shared by other users, also allowing you to do the same and rate the applications you're using.

Now, once you're inside the main window, planning your tasks is a good idea, since there are a lot of things to do. First of all, you could check the Uninstall Programs area from the General Tools menu and see if there are any invalid entries in the list. If such errors exist, they can be easily removed by pressing the Remove Invalid button(you don't even have to select them first). In this area, you can also check the ratings and comments of the programs installed
on your computer, rate them and enter your own comments too.

The Monitored Installation area contains the Installation Monitor, a feature that should be present in every serious uninstaller. Once you start the monitor, its icon appears in the system tray, and you can open the main window of this tool, where you can set options for registry, disk and INI files monitoring, as well as automatic installation detection (temporarily disabled in Vista), and monitor's startup options.

The General Tools also contains a Control Panel manager, as well as managers for taking care of your system's startup items, fonts and services. The Services Manager, for example, allows you to save profiles that can be easily loaded, so you can take full advantage of the system resources at your disposal. The funny part is that I found a built in profile called "Asta e un test" (Romanian for "this is a test"), which I am sure it shouldn't have been there, but this is not really a problem, just a small thing that somebody forgot to check...

A lot of tools are wizard-style, like the Windows Temporary Files cleaner or the Start Menu Cleaner, making it much easier for beginners to use this program (you'll really appreciate this approach only after you try to explain on the phone to a computer illiterate how to add a new key to the system registry or remove a startup item).

The Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox Tools can deliver quite a boost to your favorite Web browser, as cookies and other unwanted items start to pile up and decrease your browsing speed and, even worse, your online security. Since we have a lot of options available for these two browsers, I would really love to see a backup tool for each of them included in Advanced Uninstaller PRO, sometimes in the future...

At last, one of the best parts of this application is the Registry Tools pack, containing a cleaner, an optimizer and a backup/restore tool. Needless to say what can be done with them, and all I can tell you now is that I've been using Advanced Uninstaller PRO from time to time to clean my registry, and it always worked like a charm.

These being said, I won't tell you a single word about the rich settings area (I know, some may say they've seen even more advanced configuration screens, but when I look at the available skins and I think about the usefulness and reliability of this program, I forget about everything else) or the excellent scheduling features, leaving them for you to discover.


The Good

Advanced Uninstaller PRO looks great, has an excellent Help system, an impressive amount of features and is very easy to use. Add a price that's half of what I would ask for such a program and you get the picture...

The Bad

Some themes don't look good, but that's my personal opinion, and it's a matter of taste, after all. Also, little mistakes like the one I found in the Services Manager should't happen.

Conclusion

Advanced Uninstaller PRO is not one of those programs that you should try. Trying this amazing application is A MUST, so hit the download link below and enjoy it! As usual, it would be great to share your thoughts with the rest of us once you played with this power toy enough to get a good impression about its strengths and weaknesses...

Developer: Innovative Solutions
Price: 39$
Trial Link: Download

At IFA2 2007, the world’s leading sales platform and the CE industry’s number one venue for doing business, LG Electronics, South Korea, presented its new PDA Phone KS20, with a similar design as LG Prada, but with 3G support and Windows Mobile 6.0 compatibility.

We don’t know too much detail about the KS20, but what was made public are its 12.8mm thickness/2.8inch touch screen display and full browsing feature.
The KS20 has support for HSDPA network and 3.6 Mbps download speed.

Until we’ll have the prices, we are showing you the full specifications list:

• Windows Mobile 6 Professional;
• QVGA-touchscreen 2,8" (262K colors);
• GSM/EDGE and UMTS/HSDPA/HSUPA capabilities;
• processor ARM1136EJS MSM7200 400 MHz;
• 2 MP camera with autofocus and flash, second camera for Video Call;
• 64 MB RAM and 128 MB ROM;
• microSD slot;
• Bluetooth and Wi-Fi;
• FM-tuner;
• TV-out;
• Li-Pol battery 800 mAh;
• Size — 99,5x58x12.8 mm, weight — 99 grams.

Happy Birthday, our dear Google! Ladies and gentlemen, I probably have enough room in my house to host all those of you that didn't ever used or at least heard about Google, so today we should have parties all around the world, because the most notorious search engine and the best company to work for celebrates its 9th anniversary!

The whole story started back in 1996, shaped as a research project, its parents being Larry Page and Sergey Brin, and the original search engine was nicknamed "BackRub", but that's history already. Before I return to my Google party here, there's one more interesting thing that needs to be known...


According to various sources, including Wikipedia, but not limited to it, Google.com was registered in 1997, but the site became functional only one year later. On the 15th of September, the domain name had its 10th anniversary,Wikipedia says the incorporation date is the 7th of September, and today is the 27th! Even more, according to other sources, the incorporation papers were filled on the 4th of September, 1998, so it's all a big puzzle, and we don't know when to expect next birthday of this Internet giant, but until next time...

Happy Birthday, Dear Google, Happy Birthday tooo Youuu!